Troubleshooting Brooktrout TAPI Hardware

Brooktrout produces the most fully TAPI compliant telephony cards on the market today. We have tested Brooktrout RDSP432, Brooktrout Vantage PCI 4L, and Brooktrout Vantage PCI 8L boards with good success. Our results indicate that under Windows NT 4.0 and 2000 SP2 or lower, Active Call Center is 100% compatible with these boards. Our tests indicate that Windows 2000 SP4 also appears to work, although we have not had extensive user confirmations to date.

If you are having trouble with a Brooktrout board, we suggest the following course of action:

Switch to Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000 (SP1, SP2, or SP4) if you are using Windows 98/ME. We had problems with Brooktrout hardware under Windows 98/ME. The ideal operating system for Brooktrout hardware is Windows 2000 SP2 or SP4. Note that Brooktrout drivers will not work with Windows XP or Windows 2000 SP3.

Verify that any Brooktrout Vantage PCI series cards are installed in 5 volt PCI slots. Newer machines often have a predominance of 3.3 volt PCI slots and the Vantage PCI cards will not work in those slots.

Detailed installation instructions are available in the section on Installing Brooktrout Telephony Cards. Verify that the Brooktrout TAPI Express drivers are installed and that the board is actually configured: use Start ... Programs ... TAPI Express from the Windows taskbar to access TAPI Express features and configuration.

Check that the TAPI drivers are working by starting Active Call Center and selecting Tools ... Test Modems from the menu bar. The Brooktrout lines should be opened correctly (remember Active Call Center can only handle up to 5 lines, Active Call Center Professional has no line restrictions). Ignore messages that state that "sound quality may be too poor..."; Brooktrout boards have more than adequate sound quality. If the sound devices cannot be opened, it's an indication that the TAPI drivers for the Brooktrout card are not functioning properly. If this is the case, you should also make sure that under Start ... Settings ... Control Panel ... Multimedia that you do not have the "Use only prefered device" option checked for playback and record.

Test inbound dialing by opening a Call Tree, then selecting Phone Calls ... Monitor Phone Lines from the menu bar. Dial into the system, it should operate flawlessly.

If the system does not hang up a call shortly after the caller hangs up, it means that the board is not recognizing the hangup/disconnect tones properly. Use the AccuCall utility to "train" the board to recognize the tones for your phone system.

If the audio from the telephony card is garbled, the sound format setting may be incorrect. Find the audio format setting in Start ... Programs ... TAPI Express ... Configuration Wizard and verify the audio encoding is set to A-Law.

If the system has problems during audio recording, make sure that your Brooktrout hardware does not have silence detection enabled and that the board is set to record with "app buffer size". From the Windows task bar, follow Start ... Settings ... Control Panel ... Multimedia ... Devices ... Audio Devices ... Audio for Brooktrout TAPI Express ... Properties ... Settings ... and verify silence detection is off. In the same area you should find a setting for "Record with app buffer size" - make sure this setting is checked.

Now to work on outbound calls: make sure that software-based answer detection is disabled for outbound calls. Go to Tools ... Voice Telephony Settings ... Outbound Calls from the menu bar, then verify the status of answer detection is disabled.

Test outbound calls by selecting Phone Calls ... Make Outbound Calls from the menu bar. Enter a phone number and line number, and start dialing.

If the outbound call ends within 10-30 seconds without any indication of ever starting the Call Tree, the problem is probably some sort of improper tone detection.

On some phone systems, the Brooktrout boards can have a hard time recognizing dial tones. If a dial tone is not properly recognized by the Brooktrout board, it will not proceed to complete the outbound call. In this case, you should use the AccuCall utility to train the board for the tones of your phone system. For more information, refer to the help files for AccuCall.

The Brooktrout boards "listen" for rings after dialing. If they cannot recognize rings, they assume that the call has been disconnected, and the result is that Active Call Center stops the call shortly after dialing. On some phone systems, the Brooktrout boards can have a very difficult time recognizing rings (we noticed this on DSL lines). Fix the ring detection by using the AccuCall utility to build tone detection tables specific to your phone system. For more information, refer to the help files for AccuCall.

If the board is behaving erratically, always try turning the computer off and back on to see if that solves the problem.